Earthmaker judges the world

Today my writer friend Patricia Monaghan got to do one of those love/hate things authors do. She hit the send button and released the manuscript for her latest book of poetry to the publisher. Love? Because it is the satisfaction of a major project brought to completion.  Hate? Because a big part of your life has ended.  For what seems forever the thoughts have been churning in your mind and now they are gone, sent to be manipulated by other hands. It leaves an empty feeling and you look around and ask, what do I do now?

I like her poetry because it is often based in the spirituality found in nature.  She has allowed me here to post one of the last poems in the book which will be titled "Sanctuary" from Irish publisher Salmon.

EARTHMAKER JUDGES THE WORLD

By Patricia Monaghan

Copyright © 2012, Patricia Monaghan

Near the top of a Wisconsin hill, a spring erupts

from the point where an underground lake

rests beneath a shale cap and a lower strata

of bedrock dolomite, dense with useful flint.

There sat Earthmaker, Wajaguzera, looking out

over his creation. He could see miles to the north,

to the braided river carved from glacial water,

and south to the region of lead and buffalo; east

to the sacred Four Lakes, which his people marked

with sculptures of migrating bear and deer and birds,

and west, to the great river that drains the continent.

He sat, he saw, he was pleased. At one hand sat

Hinųgaja, his first-born daughter, and on the other,

Wihągaja, the second-born, and among them they judged

that all was good. So they misted the hills with blue smoke,

from which their old name, Xešojera, “smokey mountains.”

We call them Blue Mounds now, and few who see their dark 
heights know these stories. And without such knowledge,

how do we honor earth, its specific endless beauty? Today,

Blue Mounds means a swimming pool, picnic tables, ski trails.

But Earthmaker’s blue tobacco smoke still wreathes the hills,

and his daughters sit beside him, and they see us, and they judge.

Patricia Monaghan's website.